


The Same Gaze

by Nadeshico



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: father - Freeform, hyperbolictimechamber, son - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 05:31:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18772174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadeshico/pseuds/Nadeshico
Summary: A story about brief moments between Vegeta and Trunks, during their stay in the hyperbolic time chamber.





	The Same Gaze

The same gaze

The things that he had recently considered simple, so daily that they went completely unnoticed in the course of his life, now seemed crucial to preserve his state of mind. At times he doubted his sanity, he lost the notion of time and even of days, he confused dreams and nightmares with realities. He had spent so much time in that immaculate white room, so poorly prepared, so confused at the same time by the man who accompanied him, that he felt that if he spent a minute more there, he would go insane.

"Stop wasting time."

He pulled him out of his reverie.

It was him, his most recurrent dream, the most persecuted, the ghost that had wandered through his childhood like a myth. A story that should not be told until the end, a whisper. The proud warrior who had somehow managed to remain serene and sane all this time, time that was driving him crazy, was as enigmatic as he was despicable. And in spite of his superb attitude and the care he put into despising him, every time he was on the verge of collapse, on the verge of falling into a spiral of insanity, he awoke him with disinterest, as if he didn’t realize it.

He pulled him from a deafening trance, from a blindness of time and form. His so dreamed voice, rough and benevolent, woke him up, restored his sight, his senses. And at times he wondered _How?_

How did he do it? How was it that Vegeta was avoiding this world of infinite emptiness and total silence? Was it his will? Was it his elite training? Or was there something else behind that unshakeable and lonely warrior?

"Yes, Dad," Trunks answered as he stood up.

Vegeta looked at him with an iron face. He had spent at least five minutes kneeling on his knees looking at the nothingness itself with a disturbed appearance and, he supposed, it was the first time he was trained to suddenly collapse against his own limits.

When was the first time? Vegeta asked himself. The first time that feeling of suffocation and abandonment arrived and shook him until he was out of breath…

It had happened many years ago, when I was a little boy. Everyone's eyes were on him, on his right Nappa and on his left a saiyan young man of his age, taller and with disheveled hair, Raditz. He had a frightened look camouflaged by a frown. His hands locked in fists trembled. He was terrified.

Him, on the other hand, maintained a stern expression at all times and for the first time was surrounded by curious glances, mocking and even triumphant glances. His father had more than once told him that he was a fundamental part of a society of invincible warriors, and that they had conquered as many planets as they had wished.

One with pale complexion, some weak, reptilian, powerful, many had lost their home planets at the hands of their race and he could see, despite his young age, the hatred that so many had for his people and especially for him, the young leader of the last three saiyans alive throughout the galaxy.

They walked in silence down a long corridor, escorted by the trusted men of the great Frieza. Upon entering the room where they would be received, they were announced and although the Lord had his back facing them, observing a vast infinity of constellations, Vegeta had the ill-fated feeling that he was smiling.

Turning, he looked into his eyes, seeking to penetrate the most remote spaces of his mind and devastate him. Injecting fear from the first moment to make him even more submissive than his father was before dying.

"I'm very sorry for what happened to your planet, young Prince Vegeta," he said in a tone that sounded pleased, but Vegeta did not flinch. “Considering the circumstances, the most proper thing is that you three, being the last of your kind, serve directly my army, don’t you think?”

The prince held his gaze without flinching. Frieza arched the corners of his violet lips, he was annoyed.

“A little quiet, right?” He asked Nappa, who immediately apologized for the behavior of his prince, arguing that it must be understood by the recent loss that the three of them had suffered. That reminded Frieza of all that he had taken from him and returned his smile.

"It's true, how callous of me," he replied, wagging his long, stout tail. “After all, even if he has the bright face of his father and wears a royal cloak, he is still a young boy... Maybe he's even afraid to look under his bed still.”

Then he noticed with emotion that he had managed to pull off Vegeta a flash of feelings. The muscles in his neck tensed and he even thought he heard his teeth grinding. And he told himself that it would be his personal task to tear from his body every feeling that could diminish, every illusion that could be imagined.

“By the way... the cloak,” he said with a gesture of pointing with his finger, “should be replaced with a common uniform, like the other soldiers. I suppose you understand that he is no longer a prince here, so... no cape, no crown, Vegeta.”

The prince shook his head, displacing the images of his past. Maybe so much time in that austere space was also playing tricks on him. He put himself in fighting position and looked at his enemy on the other side. He was sweating as if the temperature had gone up twenty degrees but it was not like that. He was nervous, oscillating between thoughts just like him.

“Don’t get distracted!” His father shouted at him and snapped surprisingly against him.

Trunks put his forearms together and received the kick that his father just gave him and skillfully slipped to a safe distance. He breathed with difficulty; his eyes failed at times. Maybe he was too tired, maybe he had not eaten enough.

He constantly wondered if he could be worthy to hold a simple training with his father under such conditions. Maybe he wasn’t and he was right to despise him. It was true, Trunks couldn’t follow his footsteps. With Gohan everything was so different. He knew there was a big gap between the two of them but Gohan never denied that he had all the potential to overcome it. Even so, it had been quite difficult for both Bulma and Gohan to allow his training.

Now that he had it in front of him, he was filled with a heartbreaking bitterness. For so long he  waited for that moment, imagining from the few words of his mother all the magic that his father had to enclose. But unfortunately, there was no magic and now it seemed that everything his childless mind had created was nothing more than a sweetening of what he had heard.

"A proud man" was the most repeated and now, although it was not a lie, it seemed to hide everything else that he really was.

Disenchantment flooded him. Trunks dreamed it several times as a child, especially in those days when Gohan talked about Goku. There was so much devotion in his words that it generated a slight hint of envy. He also wanted to have that image to emulate in the loneliness of his apocalyptic world. Then he created it himself, and fantasized innocently for a long time about him. About his father.

He even thought of him more and more after the death of his mentor. He had no one. No one who could understand all his yearning to be stronger.

He threw himself at him with a coarse cry, raising a fist signal of his clear intentions. Vegeta didn’t have much trouble dodging it, feeling the air brushing his cheeks and without wasting time hit a knee to the chest of his son.

“How persistent you are," the blonde-haired woman said in a tone of annoyance and tucked a couple of strands of hair behind her ear. “You're annoying, when are you going to understand that you can’t win?”

Trunks took a deep breath and felt great difficulty swallowing, and an indescribable pain in his throat and lungs.

“Get up, boy. If you don’t want to die.”

“One of these days we're going to be so bored that we'll kill you. Make a wise decision and run away, hide as usual. Or if you prefer, we’ll give you a little advantage, then we’ll chase you and kill yo.” Seventeen said, crossing his arms, examining the destroyed area of the city with which they had razed.

He had no choice. The resignation he had to submit to was boiling his blood. He felt that he had already lost everything, after Gohan's death the hopes to which he clung slowly vanished. Until Bulma forced them to be reborn with enthusiasm and determination. They had to endure a little longer, because she said that salvation relied on the time machine she would create.

He took him from his hair and lifted him, leaving him on his knees to give him a second kick that sent him flying about thirty meters in the direction of the vast universe dressed in white.

“Fight!” Vegeta shouted and launched himself after him again.

Nappa rose from the ground and with clenched teeth dodged with great difficulty the young prince.

"It's already too late, Prince Vegeta. We trained for hours,” Nappa said between agitated breaths.

"I haven’t finished yet," he answered without regard.

His gaze held an improper hatred for someone his age. Vegeta couldn’t stop because his being longed with vehemence for the restitution of his pride. The return of his crown. And although Frieza's forces were immeasurable, and the gap between them seemed impossible to overcome, he didn’t abandon his deepest desire. A desire that perhaps bordered on fantasy: He, overthrowing the monarch who had taken everything from him and snatched from his young hands everything of which he should boast; he, the strongest saiyan in the universe fulfilling the myth he heard from his father's lips before he died.

He would be the legend, someday. Someday Vegeta would kill Frieza with his own hands and would be the super saiyan in flesh. He just needed a little more time.

His small figure slid deftly through the air and hit Nappa's jaw hard. And so, he continued until finally, many hours later he decided it was time to finish.

Since his stay on Frieza's platform he had become more stubborn as he was before the planet exploded. At times an insufferable and stubborn child. Because although he didn’t escape from his knowledge that the Lord couldn’t be defeated by him at that very moment, the vast majority of soldiers who watched him with contempt would end up looking at him with terror, since he was superior, he was stronger than most. And even if he were stripped of everything he knew, he was determined to carry his pride as a banner and implant fear in anyone who dared to look at him twice. And Frieza couldn’t snatch that from his hands.

He came back to himself.

Although he had already suffered from strenuous trainings, he couldn’t help but blink a couple of times trying to regain his sanity. Fearing to immerse himself in a mental pool again and get wrapped up in his own past without understanding why.

Desperate to return to reality, he watched as Trunks slowly rose and launched himself mercilessly against him. He kicked his face with such force that he thought he had broken his skull, but he didn’t regret it.

Vegeta clenched his gloved fists until they trembled, he felt an uncontrollable contempt for being in that situation of vague realities, as it happened to Trunks.

In the distance, the youngest was back on his feet, with a trickle of blood that splattered the untainted white of the floor with wine. And despite Vegeta's grim expression, an apex of admiration settled in him, though he could never say it out loud.

As much as the noble character of Trunks differentiated him from the cruelty that Vegeta was, it was undeniable that neither of them would surrender no matter how big the threat was planted before them. Vegeta tilted a smile when he saw it on his two legs, cleaning with the back of his fist the blood that flowed from his forehead, giving way to his chin.

“Are you going to stand there or are you going to fight with me?”

Trunks knew well that his father would not be lenient. And that the training he had received from Gohan was abysmally kinder than the prince of all Saiyans could even think. But he was also sure of the conviction that Vegeta carried with him, because he shared it. And no matter how much he detested it, maybe that year would mean freedom from his nefarious reality.

“I am going to fight.”

“Then fight!”

They fought until their last breath, fought until it hurt more than getting hit, fought until their targets faded, until they felt collapsed on the ground.

At times Vegeta couldn’t believe that with a single blow, Trunks had ended the life of that morbid creature that had held him captive all his life.

"My little pet," he heard in a whisper. “Sometimes I feel like cutting your tail, but then I think it's more pet like and I decided not to cut it.”

Vegeta was the most expressionless child he had ever met in his life and that sadly managed to encourage his perversions. His emotionless young face sought to thwart Frieza's pathetic plans by making him submissive and tormented. Although internally he achieved his goal, he would never give him the pleasure of seeing it embodied in his expression.

“I’m sending you on a mission, Vegeta. You are going to conquer a planet together with your ... colleagues,” he said with aversion. “You have a week.”

They embarked without any explanation or previous report of what they would find there. And he didn’t say anything, he just arrived with annoyance and he released all the anger he had been repressing on that insignificant planet. On many occasions Nappa and Raditz looked at him out of the corner of their eyes with astonishment. For Vegeta's gaze began to delight after devastating each hidden planet and then delivering it to Frieza. Maybe it was the only genuine fun he could have. Like a misbehaving child, crushing ants under his feet, incinerating them with a magnifying glass.

Then he came out of his reverie. And they looked at each other with complicity when the fatigue beat both of them, neither of them would ever surrender until they felt their objective in their hands. They both lowered a half smile as they looked into each other's eyes, bathed in sweat, with sore muscles, silently accepting for the first time that there was a similarity between them, among so many they didn’t know.

"Are you going to surrender or what, kid?”

Trunks smiled, thought maybe he was hallucinating once more. The hyperbolic time chamber played tricks on both of them. But for a moment he felt reflected on his father and the words of his mother came to mind.

_" **You have your father’s gaze."**_

And he smiled once more, it was strange but in fact it made him happy to find himself in him, even if it was a strange hallucination product of confinement.

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry that you have had to endure my awful english, I speak spanish and I am trying to translate my stories. Even with its numerous mistakes I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading.


End file.
